The year’s major shopping season might be over soon, but that’s no reason to stop giving your customers your all. All good businesses know that in order to succeed you must offer great service in addition to a solid product. Enhancing customer service to include customer care is an excellent starting point. Building relationships with customers that inspire loyalty and fandom is even better.

How can a product-based business achieve these highly desirable goals? Check out the follow ideas for inspiration to create strategies that will work for you.

Use data to improve customer relationships.

Customer relationship management software can allow you to collect, analyze, and use data better to improve your relationships with customer, clients, and everyone along the supply chain. Teams and employees can access information and insights from anywhere from executives to managers to sales personnel on the ground. Sage CRM integrates field sales, internal sales, customer care, and marketing. There is help available to customize and adopt a system to fit your specific needs from professionals like IWI Consulting Group which is an enterprise management company and Sage business partners. With expert assistance, you can take control of invaluable customer data and more.

Create a social experience

It’s one thing to buy and use a product as an individual, but creating a community using digital tools can help like minded people, and those with different ideas and suggestions, to connect and relate, revolving around your product or offering. It can also draw many more people to your site to browse and buy.

Clearly, social media is a necessity in today’s marketplace, but it remain selusive to many still. Start with selecting the right platforms and channels. Your customers might be too young to use Facebook frequently, but Instagram could be perfect to display your products’ features and how they’re used with stunning photography. It’s smart to claim your brand name on all channels, but unnecessary and costly to actively run, post content, and manage them all. Private message boards where customers can become members of an exclusive club will feel special, as well.

Provide extra education and entertainment related to your business and line of products. Encourage feedback, including suggestions. Hire creatives to produce high quality videos, blogs, newsletters, and more. Utilize a social media manager who can keep channels current, clean, and responsive.

Provide extras to enhance the product.

Similar to the community philosophy, it’s important to go beyond a quality offering to ensure customers are not only enjoying your goods but making the most of them to improve their lives.As above, this can come through videos and other web content. Create customizations and add-ons to increase value. Offer discounts for these with purchase. Expand your line to include related products or bring in other businesses to partner with. Sell kitchenware? Feature recipe books, too.

Plan events in communities with desirable demographics.

Make your brand more meaningful and engaging at the same time by creating real world opportunities and events. These could be charitable in nature and be a part of your social responsibility strategy. They could be related to the practical use of your product. Continuing with the kitchenware example, provide cooking classes for different ages, showoff fantastic molecular gastronomy demonstrations, or hold cooking competitions with prizes.

Shift from customer service to customer care.

Provide multiple channels for contact to suit individual preferences and truly listen. Don’t send generic form letters or skim customer emails – this will be painfully obvious in your responses. Follow-up in a timely manner and provide something of value to compensate for the negative experience. Seek out those who write bad reviews and try to make things right. Learn and improve from mistakes; don’t simply offer lip service.

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Kevin Price is the host of the nationally syndicated Price of Business show. It is one of the longest running shows of its kind in the country. He is also an author of several books, editor on several sites, and an award winning journalist.

No articles on this site should be construed as the opinion of PriceofBusiness.com . Do your homework, get expert advice before following the advice on this or any other site.